"Have you papers," he sneered, "showing that your country is paying tribute to the Dey of Algiers? If your government has not purchased immunity from attack by our corsairs, do not protest to me against your capture, but rather blame your rulers for neglecting to follow the wise example of the nations of Europe, who pay my lord the gold that he demands!" A Moslem crew was placed aboard the _Marie_, and she was sailed as a prize into Algiers. There the prisoners found in captivity the crew of the American ship _Dauphin_, under Captain Richard O'Brien, who, with his mate, Andrew Montgomery, and five seamen, had been captured by an Algerine corsair near Lisbon. To announce to the city that he was approaching with a prize the Moslem captain fired gun after gun. The Port Admiral came out in a launch to examine the prize and prisoners so that he might make a report to the Dey; the people on shore gathered at the wharves to gloat over the new wealth that had come to the city; the barrooms became crowded with revelers; everyone except the slaves rejoiced. The captors were received by their relatives and friends on shore with cheers and exultation. Estimates of the value of the prisoners and the ship passed from one to another. The captives were given filthy rags to cover their nakedness, and were marched through the streets between rows of jeering infidels. Their destination was the palace of the Dey. They were driven across the courtyard of the palace, where they entered a hall. They then were pushed and prodded by their guards up five flights of stairs, where they went through a narrow, dark entrance into the Dey's audience room. He sat, a dark, fat, greasy creature, upon a low bench that was covered with cushions of embroidered velvet. He viewed the Americans with great resentment. "I have sent several times to your nation," he said through his interpreter, a renegade Englishman, "offering to make peace with them if they would satisfy my requirements. They have never sent me a definite reply. Since they have treated me so disdainfully, I will never make peace with them! As for you, Christian dogs, you shall eat stones!" The captives were driven from his presence and marched to the bagnio, or prison, where they joined six hundred Christian slaves of various nationalities--poor, broken-spirited fellows, weighed down with chains. Their names were entered in the prison book; each of them was given a blanket, a scanty supply of coarse clothing, and a small loaf of black, sour bread. They slept on the floor, with a thin blanket between them and the cold stones.